HAPPY BIRTHDAY OOOOOOOOKLAHOMA

On November 16^th, Oklahoma will celebrate its 100^th birthday. This means that I’m pretty much half as old as the state, which really sucks when I think about it.

In the past couple of years I’ve made a lot of fun of Oklahoma in this blog, but in honor of our centennial I feel compelled to defend the great state in which I’ve lived for almost half a century. I’m going to do this by dispelling many of the myths surrounding Oklahoma which persist in the national consciousness.

Myth #1 – Oklahoma is desolate and barren.

When people think of Oklahoma they often conjure up mental images straight from Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath.”  They envision Oklahoma as flat, featureless, and unappealing.  This couldn’t be further from the truth. Here’s a photo of the state line on one of our many scenic highways taken directly from an Oklahoma tourism website:

Myth #2 – Oklahoma is full of uneducated, stupid people

Oklahoma is home to companies like Boeing, American Airlines, and Williams Communications. Technology and engineering are key components in Oklahoma’s economy. In 1957 a group of Oklahoma engineers designed a time-capsule in which a brand new Plymouth Belvedere was buried:

 Here it is when it was unearthed earlier this summer. Isn’t it beautiful!?

Myth #3 – Oklahoma is a right-wing state

Oklahoma may be a little “red” around the edges but the state is actually a bastion of progressive thought, tolerance, and liberal idealism. After all, Oklahoma is the home of beloved Senator James Inhofe who has voted against stem cell research, voted for a constitutional ban on gay marriage, and who, as the unbiased chairman of the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, was quoted as saying “Global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”

Myth #4 – Oklahoma is full of Cowboys and Indians

Perhaps it’s all those old TV westerns but people seem to think that everyone rides horses in Oklahoma and that Indians in headdresses roam the plains in search of bison. This picture (that was snapped on a cell phone a couple of weeks ago when I picked Jamie up from her job at Sonic drive-in) is not indicative of how most people commute in Oklahoma:

And as for Indians, I don’t know what you’re talking about:

Fun facts to know about Oklahoma:

1.  The term “Sooner” refers to people who cheated during the Oklahoma land run. Isn’t it great that our state nickname comes from people who committed land fraud?

2. Oklahoma is the birthplace of noted humorist Will Rogers who said such memorable things as; “Well, all I know is what I read in the papers.” Do you think Will Rogers is funny? Neither do I.

Actually, I love Oklahoma, and I love Tulsa in particular. I don’t believe anyone who says that Oklahoma is nothing but a dried up oil patch, and here’s a photo of the largest sculpture in Tulsa to prove it:

Happy 100^th Oklahoma!

 ORAL ROBERTS UNIVERSITY:

A fabulous publication called The Wittenburg Door* once asked the poignant question; “is Oral Roberts ok between consenting adults?”

This remains a hotly debated topic among theologians, and leads us into today’s topic: ORU, what the f*%k are you thinking?

Since 1965, ORU has stood proudly on the south Tulsa skyline; serving as a beacon to students from across the globe and as the nation’s premier example of the George Jetson school of architecture. 

Those of us who are not part of the ORU collective have always affectionately referred to ORU as “Six Flags Over Jesus” while scheming to someday put a giant cigarette between the fingers of the Praying Hands sculpture which sits at the entrance to the campus.

ORU has a history of being embroiled in controversy. The most famous examples came in 1977 when Oral said a 900 ft. tall Jesus told him to build the City of Faith Medical Complex and again in 1987 when Oral said that God had told him that unless his followers donated eight million dollars immediately, God would kill him.

I’ve always assumed this meant that God was actually a loan shark working for the mob.

If you’re a Tulsan that travels a lot like I do, you prefer it when ORU keeps a low profile and stays out of the news. This is because when people learn you are from Tulsa you typically get comments like, “bumped into a 900 ft. tall Jesus lately?” or “Tulsa huh? I saw the movie they filmed there: Godzilla vs. the 900 ft. tall Jesus.”  These jokes cease to be funny after the first couple of hundred times you hear them, so many Tulsans are little sensitive to ORU being linked to Tulsa in the national consciousness.

Mercifully, ORU has been keeping a relatively low profile since they shipped Oral off to the home for crazy televangelists in Newport Beach, California and Oral’s son Richard has been President of the University. That all changed this week when three former professors from ORU sued the University for wrongful termination. The lawsuit contained a huge laundry list of allegations such as students being forced to work in the campaign of a local Republican Mayoral candidate, full ride scholarships being given to 13 friends of the President’s daughter who did not even qualify academically to attend the University, University professors being forced to do the homework of the President’s children, and huge misappropriations of University funds including: the Robert’s home being remodeled 11 times in 14 years (including a 2000 sq ft. walk in closet for Robert’s wife), the University plane being used to take the Robert’s daughter and her friends on a senior trip to the Bahamas, and a $39,000.00 bill for clothing at one Tulsa store charged by Robert’s wife.

I realize that religious personalities having extravagant lifestyles and misusing donated money is old news. After all, ORU doesn’t have a Christian waterslide like Jim and Tammy Faye did, but it still bugs me.

My diabetic and cancer ridden grandmother who lived on a tiny fixed income routinely sent what little money she had to ORU because they hounded her relentlessly for a “seed faith gift.” My grandmother’s tiny rented house would have fit quite easily inside Lindsay Robert’s walk-in closet.

(Also, once when I was in seminary, I went to the ORU library to do some research and got thrown out because I wasn’t wearing a tie. That always pissed me off too, but the example I gave above is much nobler sounding)

The three professors aren’t suing for millions of dollars as one might expect. They are each suing for $10,000.00 in actual damages and $10,000.00 in punitive damages. Their primary goal is to shed a little light on a University administration whose stated purpose is to “shine the light of Christ around the world.”

It seems they are already successful.